Card dispensing equipment for card vending machines is disclosed in the specification of Japanese Utility Model Application 63-60147 (which corresponds to Japanese Utility Model Publication 7-26276 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,587).
As shown in FIG. 7, this card dispensing equipment comprises a card store 50 for holding a card stack 3 and defined by side plates 1,2, a support plate 4 for supporting this card stack 3 from the lower portion, and a feed roller 5 on a drive axle 6 which is provided under the support plate 4 and protrudes through a window 38.
A further pair of rollers 7 on an axle 11 are provided between the feed roller 5 and a dispense outlet.
The feed rollers 7 feed out to the dispense outlet 40 the card which was fed from the bottom of the stack 3 by positive rotation of the feed roller 5.
Above the feed rollers 7, a reverse roller 8 on an axle 12 is provided to be driven in the opposite direction to the card feed direction.
Further, this reverse roller 8 defines a gap with the rollers 7 which allows only one card to pass on being fed out by a projecting portion 37 of the feed roller 5. When the gap is filled with the card, the feed roller 5 is reversed.
The reverse roller 8 is driven in conjunction with axle 6, i. e. f or the same duration as the period f or dispensing a card. Its job is to push any cards above the card being dispensed back into the stack, thus preventing a "double dispense".
The cards are fed to a discharge roller 9 on an axle 13 cooperating with an auxiliary roller 10 on an axle 14. The rollers are driven by a drive motor 15 having a drive shaft 16 coupled to pulleys 17,19,20,21,22 and 24 by belts 18,23. A weight 39 holds the cards down and a detector switch 44 is provided.
Conventional cassettes as described above are relatively insecure and, in particular, when a cassette is removed from dispensing equipment, there is a risk that one or more cards may protrude through the dispense outlet and could therefore be accessed by unauthorized persons.